On Growing Old

What happened to that skinny kidthe one so skinny her ribs could be counted just by looking? Today, she is a twittery, purse-clutching, cane-wielding, pill-popping little old lady living alone. Still skinny, she prefers the term petite. It sounds better. I am that skinny kid. I'm missing a few parts and have replaced several of the worn-out ones. Then, there are all the abuses suffered by this 88-year-old body. Nothing prepares you for old age. You get out of bed one morning and voila! A bolt out of the blue and you can no longer function normally. What to do? Now, there is ample time not only to smell the roses but also to discuss my aches and pains with others of my ilk. What an impressive array of pills I have. Group one is simplejust one pill to take when I get out of bed. For a half hour after group one, no eating, drinking, or lying down. The group two pills must be taken on an empty stomach. Then, I can have breakfast and take group three pills. Group four are doled out into a little dish, and I take them on a catch-as-catch-can basis, meaning when I remember. I keep the group four pills in the cupboard; otherwise, they clutter the counter. As soon as I have a workable system, my doctor changes everything. From four pills to two and a half, for example. I do not have much luck splitting a tiny pill, so I guess I am healthier on some days than on others. Whatever. About the missing parts: The clerk at the shoe store did a double take when he removed my right shoe and saw that a big toe was missing. He shook my shoe and when nothing emerged, he peered into it. Emptiness. The first sight of the disfigurement caused by my breast removal prompted me to tell the doctor he needed sewing lessons. He had left me lumpy and bumpy. Today, I have a hard time telling whether anything had ever been there. Hardly a scar shows. Although I think a Band-Aid would have sufficed, I went to the store to see about a prosthesis. I was shown what looked like a bird cage made of iron. If I put it on, I would have fallen on my face. My daughter-in-law gave me some small shoulder pads removed from a garment. Just the thing to even me out. My right total hip replacement is working out just fine. My dentures fit most of the time. I need a cataract operation for the left eye. I bought hearing aids so I could enjoy a sermon, a play, a movie, or just nice conversation. I wish. I plainly hear the rustling of the day's calendar, sneezing, coughing, and babies fussing. On occasion, I hear a word here and there, but the minister's jokes go by me like a bat out of a cave. Coffee time after the service is bedlamthe Tower of Babel. The aids reposing on the mantel do nothing to enhance the decor of the room, but I do use them to watch television when I am alone, when I remember. More often, I forget, and the volume is such that I do not hear the phone or the doorbell. Hard as I try, I cannot adjust them to my liking. I have met only one person who has admitted to being satisfied, but then, I have not met everybody. My condition seems to have worsened, so maybe I should learn sign language. But with whom could I converse? I doubt lipreading would be the ticket for me. Have you watched people speak? In my opinion, no two pair of lips form a word in quite the same way. Simply put, I would be at sea. Everyone is quick to tell me that my pacemaker protrudes because of lack of flesh. Had I known this in advance, I would at least have asked that the pacemaker be installed a few inches lower, under a fleshier part of me. I check it at home every 3 months by phone and once a year at the hospital. So far, all is well, although it did show that I had a heart attack somewhere down the line. I have not the faintest idea when or wherenor does the doctor. I think they are called silent ones. Ulcers? How many bottles of Mylanta and other medications have I taken without relief? One test turned out rather worrisome for a particular individualme! Rubber tubing, about the width of a pencil, was to be inserted into my stomach, withdrawn, and reinserted for a certain number of times. All went well the first time. The next time, 14 inches of the tube broke off and remained in my stomach. I was closely monitored. I even posed for a picture during the week or more that the tubing remained in my stomach. I clearly saw it stretched out full length in my intestinesan interesting sight. Another test took some jostling to get me into position before the nonflexible tubing was inserted into my stomach. My delight at the successful completion of the task dwindled when I heard the words: the light isn't working, Mrs. Lundberg. The arrival of Tagamet on the market did the trick for my ulcer. I am inclined to believe my Graves disease is the most dismaying. Although I fell down a couple of times without injury or pain, I felt robbed of my self-confidence. I do not really need a cane, but I have come to depend on one, even though I just carry it. I recall the 9 days I spent in the hospital for an operation on my football knee. That time was a vacation for me. I had no discomfort. I just had to keep from bending my knee. I was free to scoot around the halls in a wheelchair. I played cards with a young man who was badly injured in a car accident; I combed the gorgeous, curly, auburn hair of a young lady; and I generally kept myself busy. My thyroid problem continues off and on. Once, I was isolated in a Chicago hospital and given radioactive iodine followed by pills. My feet began to swell, but the doctor assured me that it would be okay to go on an already planned 2-week trip. By the time my traveling companion and I got home, I could hear water gurgle in my heart. But I did have well filled-out legsfor once. Back into the hospital. By the time they let me go home, I weighed next to nothing. Years later, I had a similar episode in Duluth and was given one $500 pill. No muss, no fuss. I didn't even get into the doctor's office; received it standing in the doorway. My, modern science! One of my more humorous (and true) events was when I received a mailing from, I think, the Mayo Clinic. The mailing contained an article on the seven signs of prostate problems. Oddly enough, shortly after ascertaining that I had every one of the symptoms, I had yet another medical problem and found myself in the emergency room. Of course, I asked the hospital staff to please check my prostate gland. The doctor in charge said, without a smile, that if I had that problem it would be one for the books. The next morning, the head nurse mentioned to me that she heard I had prostate problems. The month spent at the nursing home after hip surgery was fun, except for the iron pills. I will have to be paid to take those pills ever again. I was fortunate to share a room with an old acquaintance. She did not speak very clearly, and I do not hear all that well, but we managed to enjoy ourselves and each other. We targeted the male nurses. Imagine my consternation when one came into the room and announced that he was taking me for a shower. I am innately shy, but I think I carried that one off rather well. I've had arthritis for ages and ages. I began to get pain in my lower back and beyond, but the doctor did not put a name to it and just suggested Advil, so I called it arthritis. Some days, it took a good hour or more of activity to be able to move around comfortably. Quite suddenly, the pain decided to leave the lower part of me and settle in my upper half. After several bloodlettings and other testing, the doctor finally came to the conclusion I had polymyalgia rheumatica. I was impressed, but the best part was yet to come. The doctor prescribed prednisone, and believe it or not, two pills left me painfree. Although I will gradually be taken off the pills, I remain pain free. I feel like a new womanwell, an old woman with some new parts! Could it be that most families have an accident-prone child? If so, the numerous small scars from head to toe must mean that I am that child in our family. I acquired some when I was well into adulthood. I have had just one fracture, in a wrist. Then there are the cramps you have when you must get out of a warm bed and walk around until your big toes (toe, in my case) become normal instead of being locked in an upright position. Their shape always reminds me of the soft shoes worn by elves. And through the pain, I still manage a weak smile (or is it a sickly grin) when I hear, Oh Grammahh! from the grandchildren when they see the shape of my knuckle-locked hands. Grotesque, but fortunately, the condition is temporaryas is every condition, I have learned.


On Growing Old.
How is it that we continue alive as long as we Per contra, how is it that, once living, we (1? not live for ever? These questions seem so elemental that ignorance of the answer has the appearance of being gross. However, so it is. e know neither what Life is, nor what Death is, nor h?w nor why the one passes into the other. This ls not for want of guessing, for many centuries and much hard thinking have been devoted to this busiaess in the realm of pure speculation. But these speculations Have not advanced us a whit, and even now, when the sacrosanct problem of Life has long since been impounded by biologists and submitted ^he cold contemplation of science, we are forced to c?nfess that the secret remains remarkably well hidden. Though much has been learnt of the proves attending Life, and of the conditions govern-|n8 its continuance or  Nevertheless, impregnable as appear the obstacles which hedge in and conceal from sight this ultimate mystery of existence the collateral problem senescence has been attacked with a good courage and not without some minor successes. Those who are scientifically concerned with senescence may be divided into two schools. Of these one considers ?ld age to be a natural phase in the cycle of existence and no more an anomaly than the cessation ?f growth when adult age is attained. The other school regards senescence as a pathological phenomenon depending upon the slow deterioration of.
tissues under the influence of poisons, microchemical, or metabolic. The greatest exponent of t his school is Metchnikoff. For him old age is the expression of damage inflicted upon the organism hy micro-chemical poisons from the large intestine: the elixir of life, therefore, is to be found in some agent capable of inhibiting the growth and activities: of the malign inhabitants of the colon. In the" lactic acid bacillus, before which the normal putrefactive bacilli of the colon are found to retire, wepossess, according to this conception, the natural' antidote to old age.
The latest contributor to the biological theory of. old age is Dr. C. S. Minot,* professor of comparative anatomy in the Harvard Medical School, who views growth, old age, and death as phases in the normal life-cycle of living matter. In the course of his arguments he presents some old facts inv new dresses and in rather unexpected applications. Taking the capacity for growth as a measure pi youth, he observes that over 98 per cent, of the original power of growth with which a rabbit's ovum is endowed at the moment of fertilisation has been lost by the time it is born. How rapid is the diminution in this power may be gathered from the following figures derived from the weighing cf. rabbit embryos preserved in alcohol. Between the ninth and the fifteenth days of intra-uterine life the average daily increment in weight of a rabbitembryo is 704 per cent., while in the succeeding five days, from the 15th to the 20th, it has already fallen to 212 per cent. The figures as regards man are less complete, of course, but instructive.
Between the third and the fourth months the human embryo increases in weight some 600 per cent., between the fourth and the fifth months 200 per cent., and so progressively less and less. It i& interesting to observe that the percentage increase recorded for the fourth month of fcetal life is the same as that supplied by the whole of the first year, after birth. It is quite certain then that we must"cease to regard the moment of birth as the period' of earliest youth, for by the time this epoch has been, reached all but an insignificant proportion of thetotal capacity for growth has been exhausted, and the new-born infant is, relatively to his former self,, an already effete and worn out young person.. Whimsical as this conception appears there seems to be no escape from it. We are old at birth, and if we do not, like Gilbert's precocious baby, die *" The Problem of Age, Growth, and Death." Bj-Charles S. Minot. Murray. London, 1908. November 28, 1908 ?enfeebled old dotards at five, we have by then very little left of that prime function of youth,. the capacity for growing.
Briefly stated, the view expounded by Dr. Minot is as follows: The process of cellular eA'olution, which begins with fertilisation and ends with death, he calls " cytomorphosis." It begins with the un-?differentiated cell and advances always in one direction?namely through differentiation to death. Capacity for growth is the most prominent characteristic of the youthful tisue, differentiation that of the adult tissue; and these two characteristics are ?mutually antagonistic.
According to the author '' growth and differentiation of the protoplasm are the cause of the loss of the power of growth." Now the most prominent attribute of senescent cells is a relative increase in the proportion borne by the protoplasm to the nucleus; ergo, senescence depends upon this increase of protoplasm. On the other hand, the power of enormous growth which the act of fertilisation confers upon an ovum is associated during segmentation with a relative overgrowth of nuclear tissue. Ergo, the essential feature of this renewal of youth, is a relative overgrowth of nuclear tissue. " The cycle of life," we are told, " has two phases, an early brief one during which the young material is produced, then the later and prolonged one i11 which the process of differentation goes on. I believe these are the alternating phases of life, and that, as we define senescence as an increase and differentiation of the protoplasm, so we must define rejuvenation as an increase of the nuclear material. The alternation of phases is due to the alternation in the proportions of nucleus and protoplasm." If only Dr. Minofc could suggest the cause of this latter alternation!